Republican remainders
For evidence of just how far New York City’s Republican Party has fallen, look no further than the two candidates who’ve sewn up the five county parties’ endorsements to run on the GOP line for mayor. Fernando Mateo, founder of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers and former de Blasio campaign bundler who funneled nearly $19,000 in straw donations to the mayor’s campaign, has earned endorsements from the Manhattan, Bronx and Queens Republican parties.
Mateo was never accused of anything or charged in de Blasio’s pay-to-play scandal, but he was close with donors Jeremy Reichberg and Jona Rechnitz, both men convicted on federal corruption charges, in Federal Court for their efforts to bribe NYPD officers and buy influence at City Hall. His Inwood restaurant, La Marina, was a magnet for noise complaints and liquor violations. So much for the party of law and order.
Meanwhile, Republican Party bosses on Staten Island and in Brooklyn are backing red beret-wearing radio shock jock and Guardian Angels founder Curtis
Sliwa, a man who fabricated stories about heroic acts he committed in the 1970s to raise his civilian patrol brigade’s profile, including one tall tale that cops kidnapped him because they opposed his vigilante patrols on the subways.
Those two candidates, their platforms thin as paper, probably won’t inspire GOP voters to sign up and head to the polls in New York. Statewide, more people are now registered as unaffiliated with any political party than are registered Republicans. And in New York City, as of November 2020, 3.7 million people were registered Democrats compared to just 568,732 registered Republicans.
So dismal are the GOP’s chances at winning the mayoralty that some were encouraging registered Republicans to switch party enrollment and become Democrats, so their votes will matter more. Not that long ago, this was the party of actual serious candidates like (pre-crazy) Rudy Giuliani, Mike Bloomberg, Joe Lhota and Nicole Malliotakis, who won five of the last seven elections. Times have changed.
Brooklyn: I always thought the Peace Corps had noble goals and was emblematic of what’s good in the world. However, no topic is inviolable for the left as Jonathan Zimmerman denigrates it as “white saviorism” (“The Peace Corps and white saviorism,” op-ed, March 1). Historical revisionism at its best.
William Thurlow